Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire

PHILOSOPHY.

§ I.

Write filosophy or philosophy as you please, but agree that as soon as it appears it is persecuted. Dogs to whom you
present an aliment for which they have no taste, bite you. You will say that I repeat myself; but we must a hundred
times remind mankind that the holy conclave condemned Galileo; and that the pedants who declared all the good citizens
excommunicated who should submit to the great Henry IV., were the same who condemned the only truths which could be
found in the works of Descartes.

All the spaniels of the theological kennel bark at one another, and all together at de Thou, la Mothe, Le Vayer, and
Bayle. What nonsense has been written by little Celtic scholars against the wise Locke!

These Celts say that Cæsar, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, and Marcus Aurelius, might be philosophers, but that philosophy
is not permitted among the Celts. We answer that it is permitted and very useful among the French; that nothing has
done more good to the English; and that it is time to exterminate barbarity. You reply that that will never come to
pass. No; with the uninformed and foolish it will not; but with honest people the affair is soon concluded.

§ II.

One of the great misfortunes, as also one of the great follies, of mankind, is that in all countries which we call
polished, except, perhaps, China, priests concern themselves with what belongs only to philosophers. These priests
interfered with regulating the year; it was, they say, their right; for it was necessary that the people should know
their holy days. Thus the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman priests, believed themselves mathematicians and
astronomers; but what mathematics and astronomy! Whoever makes a trade of quackery cannot have a just and enlightened
mind. They were astrologers, and never astronomers.

The Greek priests themselves first made the year to consist only of three hundred and sixty days. Their
geometricians must have informed them that they were deceived by five days and more. They, therefore, corrected their
year. Other geometricians further showed them that they were deceived by six hours. Iphitus obliged them to change
their Greek almanac. They added one day in four years to their faulty year; Iphitus celebrated this change by the
institution of the Olympiads.

They were finally obliged to have recourse to the philosopher Meton, who, combining the year of the moon with that
of the sun, composed his cycle of nineteen years, at the end of which the sun and moon returned to the same point
within an hour and a half. This cycle was graven in gold in the public place of Athens; and it is of this famous golden
number that we still make use, with the necessary corrections.

We well know what ridiculous confusion the Roman priests introduced in their computation of the year. Their blunders
were so great that their summer holidays arrived in winter. Cæsar, the universal Cæsar, was obliged to bring the
philosopher Sosigenes from Alexandria to repair the enormous errors of the pontiffs. When it was necessary to correct
the calendar of Julius Cæsar, under the pontificate of Gregory XIII., to whom did they address themselves? Was it to
some inquisitor? It was to a philosopher and physician named Lilio.

When the almanac was given to Professor Cogé, rector of the university, to compose, he knew not even the subject.
They were obliged to apply to M. de Lalande, of the Academy of Sciences, who was burdened with this very painful task,
too poorly recompensed. The rhetorician Cogé, therefore, made a great mistake when he proposed for the prize of the
university this subject so strangely expressed:

“Non magis Deo quam regibus infensa est ista quæ vocatur hodie philosophia.” —“That which we now call
philosophy, is not more the enemy of God than of kings.” He would say less the enemy. He has taken
magis for minus. And the poor man ought to know that our academies are not enemies either to the king
or God.

§ III.

If philosophy has done so much honor to France in the “Encyclopædia,” it must also be confessed that the ignorance
and envy which have dared to condemn this work would have covered France with opprobrium, if twelve or fifteen
convulsionaries, who formed a cabal, could be regarded as the organs of France; they were really only the ministers of
fanaticism and sedition; those who forced the king to dissolve the body which they had seduced. Their fanatical
credulity for convulsions and the miserable impostures of St. Médard, was so strong, that they obliged a magistrate,
elsewhere wise and respectable, to say in full parliament that the miracles of the Catholic church always existed. By
these miracles, we can only understand those of convulsions, for assuredly it never performed any others; at least, if
we believe not in the little children resuscitated by St. Ovid. The time of miracles is passed; the triumphant church
has no longer occasion for them. Seriously, was there one of the persecutors of the “Encyclopædia” who understood one
word of the articles Astronomy, Dynamics, Geometry, Metaphysics, Botany, Medicine, or Anatomy, of which this book,
become so necessary, treats in every volume. What a crowd of absurd imputations and gross calumnies have they
accumulated against this treasure of all the sciences! They should be reprinted at the end of the “Encyclopædia,” to
eternize their shame. See what it is to judge a work which they were not even fit to study. The fools! they have
exclaimed that philosophy ruined Catholicism. What, then, in twenty millions of people, has one been found who has
vexed the least officer of the parish! one who has failed in respect to the churches! one who has publicly proffered
against our ceremonies a single word which approached the virulence with which these railers have expressed themselves
against the regal authority! Let us repeat that philosophy never did evil to the state, and that fanaticism, joined to
the esprit du corps, has done much in all times.

§ IV.

Substance of Ancient Philosophy.

I have consumed about forty years of my pilgrimage in two or three corners of the world, seeking the philosopher’s
stone called truth. I have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine, Plato and Malebranche, and I
still remain in ignorance. In all the crucibles of philosophers, there are perhaps two or three ounces of gold, but all
the rest is caput mortuum, insipid mire, from which nothing can be extracted.

It seems to me that the Greeks, our masters, wrote much more to show their intellect, than they made use of their
intellect to instruct themselves. I see not a single author of antiquity who has a consistent, methodical, clear
system, going from consequence to consequence.

All that I have been able to obtain by comparing and combining the systems of Plato, of the tutor of Alexander,
Pythagoras, and the Orientals, is this: Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. The world is
arranged according to mathematical laws; therefore, it is arranged by an intelligence.

It is not an intelligent being like myself who presided at the formation of the world; for I cannot form a miserable
worm; therefore, the world is the work of an intelligence prodigiously superior. Does this being, who possesses
intelligence and power in so high a degree, necessarily exist? It must be so, for he must either have received being
from another, or through his own nature. If he has received his being from another, which is very difficult to
conceive, I must look up to this other, which will in that case be the first cause. On whichever side I turn, I must
admit a first cause, powerful and intelligent, who by his own nature is necessarily so.

Has this first cause created things out of nothing? We cannot conceive that to create out of nothing is to change
nothing into something. I cannot admit such a creation, at least until I find invincible reasons which force me to
admit what my mind can never comprehend. All that exists appears to exist necessarily, since it exists; for if to-day
there is a reason for the existence of things, there was one yesterday; there has been one in all times; and this cause
must always have had its effect, without which it would have been a useless cause during eternity.

But how can things have always existed, being visibly under the hand of the first cause? This power must always have
acted in like manner. There is no sun without light, there is no motion without a being passing from one point of space
to another.

There is, therefore, a powerful and intelligent being who has always acted; and if this being had not acted, of what
use to him would have been his existence? All things are, therefore, emanations from this first cause. But how can we
imagine that stone and clay may be emanations of the eternal, intelligent, and puissant being? Of two things, one must
be; either that the matter of this stone and mine necessarily exists of itself, or that it exists necessarily by this
first cause; there is no medium.

Thus, therefore, there are but two parts to take; either to admit matter eternal of itself, or matter eternally
proceeding from a powerful, intelligent, eternal being. But existing of its own nature, or emanating from a producing
being, it exists from all eternity, because it exists; and there is no reason that it might not have always
existed.

If matter is eternally necessary, it is in consequence impossible — it is contradictory, that it should not exist;
but what man can assure you that it is impossible, that it is contradictory, that this fly and this flint have not
always existed? We are, however, obliged to swallow this difficulty, which more astonishes the imagination than
contradicts the principles of reasoning.

Indeed, as soon as we have conceived that all has emanated from the supreme and intelligent being; that nothing has
emanated from him without reason; that this being, always existing, must always have acted; that, consequently, all
things must have eternally proceeded from the bosom of his existence — we should no more be deterred from believing the
matter of which this fly and flint are formed is eternal, than we are deterred from conceiving light to be an emanation
of the all-powerful being.

Since I am an extended and thinking being, my extent and thought are the necessary productions of this being. It is
evident to me that I cannot give myself extent or thought. I have, therefore, received both from this necessary
being.

Can he have given me what he has not? I have intelligence; I am in space; therefore, he is intelligent and is in
space. To say that the Eternal Being, the All-Powerful God, has from all time necessarily filled the universe with His
productions, is not taking from Him His free-will; but on the contrary, for free-will is but the power of acting. God
has always fully acted; therefore God has always used the plenitude of His liberty.

The liberty which we call indifference is a word without an idea — an absurdity; for this would be to determine
without reason; it would be an effect without a cause. Therefore God cannot have this pretended free-will, which is a
contradiction in terms. He has, therefore, always acted by the same necessity which causes His existence. It is,
therefore, impossible for the world to exist without God; it is impossible for God to exist without the world. This
world is filled with beings who succeed each other; therefore, God has always produced beings in succession.

These preliminary assertions are the basis of the ancient eastern philosophy, and of that of the Greeks. We must
except Democritus and Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy has combated these dogmas. But let us remark that the
Epicureans were founded on an entirely erroneous philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all the other
philosophy subsisted with all the physical systems. All nature, except the void, contradicts Epicurus, and no
phenomenon contradicts the philosophy which I explain. Now, a philosophy which agrees with all which passes in nature,
and which contents the most attentive mind, is it not superior to all other unrevealed systems?

After the assertions of the most ancient philosophers, which I have approached as nearly as possible, what remains
to us? A chaos of doubts and chimeras. I believe that there never was a philosopher of a system who did not confess at
the end of his life that he had lost his time. It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been
much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship, towers much above him who imagined
innate ideas.